How Did The Enlightenment Cause The French Revolution

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Asses the view that the Enlightenment was the most important cause of the French Revolution? The Enlightenment was an 18th century philosophical movement in Europe that stressed the importance of reason in analysing and investigating. This led to a critical review of existing ideas and social institutions and how they could be changed and improved, through the use of reason. In this period of time a lot of people were becoming more aware of social, economic and political interactions. The idea of monarchy was becoming a disappointing plan. However the Enlightenment was not the only reason why the French Revolution began. The social and political factors also played a big part in the start of the Revolution. The social cause was the important factor because it separated the people according…show more content…
The wars meant it had expense and disrupt in trade. Example of this was the west coast ports depended on trade from West Indies and American colonies which was disrupted during the war time. This affected France because due to the lack of trade and industries got disrupted and the workers income was affected by this. These problems were multiplied because the end of the war was followed by economic depression. The political impact of France was the main factor that spread ideas. Soldiers who fought in America bought some of the ideas back across to France. Even though victory restored some prestige to the monarchy, the financial impact of the war was to make this restoration of prestige short lived. The American war was an important cause because it affected France in a lot of ways. France got affected economically which made the people of France lose hope on monarch. The enlightenment was a more important cause because without that the people would have not thought the American Revolution as a big turning point. The critical thinking that the enlightenment bought about caused the people to look at it from another
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